DPSCD garden partnership yields crops while aiding student growth through kindness
For the month of November, DPSCD’s campaign to foster positive relationships, Expect Respect, focuses on kindness.
Kindness can be demonstrated in many ways. Students can speak to or help a senior citizen. They can create a gratitude list. They can also engage in nurturing and empathetic behaviors through the active learning of building and tending a garden.
That’s where the District’s partner, Big Green (Detroit office) comes in. With support, direction, and input from Big Green Detroit as well as District garden staff, DPSCD students have built and cultivated Learning Gardens and Giving Gardens at close to 10 schools in the District. The result? How about 40 pounds of produce including kale, collard greens, mustard greens, beets, and herbs, according to the fall 2020 Harvest Data from Big Green Detroit! However, the bigger yield is the development of kindness attributes ranging from tenderness to empathy and nurturing as well as the character formation skills of following a project through from seed to yield.
“Kindness to the soil, kindness to nature and kindness to the school based garden staff are ways that our work helps contribute to the development of kindness in the thousands of DPSCD students we have serviced,” said Ava Jackson, Program Manager of Big Green’s Detroit office. “It’s a privilege for us to provide an opportunity for an experiential learning experience.”
In addition to having DPSCD students practice kindness based soft skills through participation in Learning Gardens and Giving Gardens, there’s a practical benefit as well: increasing students’ knowledge and likeability of fresh fruits and vegetables along with a deeper understanding of food literacy.
DPSCD schools participating in the program with either a Learning Garden or Giving Garden include:
- Coleman A. Young Elementary
- Edison Elementary
- Chrysler Elementary
- Durfee Elementary-Middle
- Fisher Magnet Lower Academy
- Mann Learning Community
- John R. King Academic and Performing Arts Academy
Furthermore, Golightly (5536 St. Antoine location) and the Charles Wright Academy of Arts and Science recently each received gardens. This form of experiential learning is another way DPSCD enacts a Transformative Culture and demonstrates a Whole Child Commitment through its curriculum options as well as campaigns such as Expect Respect. To learn more about the Expect Respect campaign and this month’s characteristic, kindness, please visit www.detroitk12.org/expectrespect. For more information on the work of Big Green Detroit please go to: biggreen.org/where-were-growing/detroit/.